Brokaw: Remember when the Republicans lost their majority after 1995 shutdown?

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TOM BROKAW: Well it's a delicate game. You know, the Republicans remember what happened when they were swept in 1994, then shut down the government and were turned out not too long after that.

They probably don't remember that because it didn't happen. In fact, the real lesson of 1995 is that the Republicans handled the shutdown about as badly as they could have from a PR perspective, yet gained three Senate seats in the 1996 congressional elections and finished with just four House seats fewer than they had won in 1994.

This is one reason why I wonder whether all this talk about the political danger of a shutdown is overblown.

About The Author

Bio:David Freddoso came to the Washington Examiner in June 2009, after serving for nearly two years as a Capitol Hill-based staff reporter for National Review Online.
Before writing his New York Times bestselling book, The Case Against Barack Obama, he spent three years assisting Robert Novak, the legendary Washington...

David Freddoso came to the Washington Examiner in June 2009, after serving for nearly two years as a Capitol Hill-based staff reporter for National Review Online.

Before writing his New York Times bestselling book, The Case Against Barack Obama, he spent three years assisting Robert Novak, the legendary Washington columnist. Freddoso arrived in Washington in late 2001 and began covering Capitol Hill for the conservative weekly newspaper Human Events.